


Deus Ex Machina

by Reading Redhead (readingredhead)



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 13:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readingredhead/pseuds/Reading%20Redhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the tenth anniversary of her mother's death, Nita sits in the dark and quiet of her own apartment and thinks about all of the people who have stepped in for her, at the last moment, and saved her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deus Ex Machina

**Author's Note:**

> Written for talonkarrde88, who wanted something with Ed.

In one of his moods, Kit spends half an hour regaling Nita with information about Elizabethan drama. Nita mostly nods and tries to get some of her own work done, but towards the end of the one-sided conversation, Kit says something that made her stop and think. While throwing around phrases like "proscenium arch" and "the physicality of the stage," he mentions the trapdoor hatch above the stage that had come to be known as a deus ex machina. "It's a holdover from ancient Greek theatrical traditions, actually," he says. "It's Latin. It means 'god out of the machine.' Because in the old Greek tragedies, when everything had gone all to hell and no one knew how the human characters would solve these cosmic problems, the gods came in and fixed the problems for them. And the actors who played the gods would just appear, like magic, from the door in the ceiling. But," Kit adds as an afterthought, "after the Greeks, it's not as common. Aristotle thought it was kind of a cop-out." And he smiles and looks pleased with himself for having remembered all of this.

\--

On the tenth anniversary of her mother's death, Nita sits in the dark and quiet of her own apartment and finds Kit's words running around in her head. She thinks about all of the people who have stepped in for her, at the last moment, and saved her life. She thinks about the times when she's been saved from certain destruction by manifestations of the Powers themselves, the closest things to gods that she believes in.

She wonders if Aristotle would think her life is a cop-out, and if it even matters.

\--

 _You okay, Neets?_

Beneath the mindspeech, Nita feels Kit's concern. _I will be_ , she says, closing her eyes and slowly lowering herself to lie down on her bed. _I just need some space, and some sleep._

A pause. Then, _Breakfast tomorrow?_

She smiles a little, but it hurts. _You're buying._

 _For you, I would buy all of the breakfasts in Manhattan, and have them delivered to your doorstep._

She knows he's trying to make her feel better, but she also knows the only thing that'll ever do that is time. _Good thing I only want one_ , she says, then cuts the connection and lies in the stillness, trying to force herself to sleep, and willing herself not to dream.

\--

Something's tangled around her legs. Blankets. But it doesn't feel like blankets. Nita blinks, sees saltwater murk through her stinging eyes, feels the pull of weeds twisted about her from thighs to ankles, weighing her down like an anchor and pricking her skin with a million tiny cuts, sending her flashes of memories that pierce to the bone. An aurora over the New York skyline -- unending light across a plane of airbrushed silicon -- her mother standing like a goddess in denim and a t-shirt, ankle-deep in raging water -- a lonesome dog howling in despair at the night beyond the moon --

Then something flashes past her, arrowing down towards the weeds and slicing through them, freeing her from their sinuous fingers, and Nita takes a deep breath and is surprised to find air, since she's still deep in the water. Stunned, she floats for a moment, eyes closed, ignoring the impossibility of the present moment.

She opens her eyes just in time to see a great white shape swim by her, a brightness relieved only by a single dark eye.

"Your distress reminded me of the job I bear no more," he says, in a voice softened by death and the Heart of Time, but not without its teeth.

"Ed." In an instant she feels safe, but also vulnerable. He would never hurt her, but he knows her, and she doesn't know if she wants that.

"Swim with me a while," he says, and before she can answer, he lashes his powerful tail and begins to surge forward.

Nita wants to protest that she can't keep up, not in this body, but she kicks out with her legs and somehow, joyously, she _can_. She catches up to Ed and they're swimming together, side by side, through gradually lighter waters.

"What is today's distress?" he asks, not halting his swimming.

"It's stupid," she says, feeling once again like the awkward twelve-year-old she was when first she met him, and like her problems are so very small. But she takes one look at that enormous black eye and she tells him all of it. "When things get down to the wire," she finishes, "someone else always saves me. You weren't even the first. And what Kit said, about deus ex machina..." She trails off, unsure what there is left for her to say.

"I am no god," Ed says, but he burns bright with an inward fire that hurts her eyes to look at, even though every second she looks it gets easier to bear, even though every second she looks, she swears he's only getting brighter.

Nita snorts, rolls her eyes. "Well, not literally, I guess. Though right now, you sort of look the part."

Ed laughs, too, the eeriness of a shark's laughter tempered strangely by the light through which he swims. "As do you, sprat," he says, swimming close enough to touch her skin. "I am no wizard, but I have seen the work that you do. Have you ever thought that you are the universe's version of this 'deus ex machina'? The second chance that most people don't expect. To others, what you do may seem like the actions of a god...but in the end, even the actors who play the gods on stage are only men. Even the Powers who fight for you are the representatives of One still greater."

\--

Nita wakes up like she's coming up for air after a sojourn in the Crushing Dark, with the vague sensation that there was more to the dream than she remembers, but even thinking back on it won't help her recover whatever ending she might have lost.

\--

She meets Kit for breakfast at a little place near her apartment. She doesn't tell him about the dream, but she does ask him a little more about deus ex machina.

"I thought you weren't listening to any of that."

"I wasn't listening to most of it," Nita corrects him, and smiles. "But that part sounded a little too close for comfort."

"Yeah," Kit says, idly spearing the last few bites of pancake on his fork, "I get what you mean. It bugged me a bit when I started reading about it. But you know what? I did a little research, and 'machina' didn't really mean machine the way we think of it. It was more about something being handmade, or made by man. So the saying is really more like 'god as man makes him.'"

Kit finishes the pancakes, and Nita thinks about what Ed told her, and about something she read in the manual a long time ago. "Those who agree to serve the Powers..."

"...themselves become the Powers," Kit finishes. "Not the easiest gig, but it still beats everything else." He gives her a lopsided look, half pensive, half smiling.

"Yeah," Nita says, and finds it in her to smile back.


End file.
